


connections of the heart

by bubbleteahime



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/M, M/M, Nation Astral Plane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-25 19:27:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15647403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bubbleteahime/pseuds/bubbleteahime
Summary: “One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.”—or, how four relationships can be the most real in a surreal setting.





	connections of the heart

**Author's Note:**

> written for the hetalia writers discord otp event.

 

 

 

“One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.”

  
— Haruki Murakami, _Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage_

 

 

-

 

 

Distance is relative in certain spaces.

Taiwan walks in the night market after 1 a.m. The stalls are closing up, and only a few stragglers walk the street with plastic bags on their wrists. There are things she cannot explain in words. A primordial intuition, an instinct, that leads her to a known unknown.

She looks back at the emptying night market, the busy scents and sounds of two hours ago lingering in the vibrations of the air. Lanterns sway on a windless night. The ghost of a crowd stays out at the night market. She should be unsettled, but she isn’t. 

The alley shortcut she is taking looks different tonight. It looks red and green and blue and white. It turns when it did not. It opens to a stone path up a hill, the shadow of bamboos hanging over.

She follows the path up, each stone step quiet. Dark grey _torii_ gates stationed with each measured distance. There is the heavy silence after a bell has been stuck. It is all around, except for a trickle of water she can hear but cannot see.

The final _torii_ gate is twice as large as the others. It is slate grey and made of ashes, and there is a lone figure kneeling before it staring out.

Taiwan knows who it is. She walks up to Japan and squats down, taking a glance at his face. There is the trickle of water.

A chime.

She looks behind them: A thousand paper cranes fly past them, hard and fast. A soundless monsoon dismantles their wings. They plunge into a dark ocean against a furious gale. A yawning wave swallows their carcasses whole into its jaw.

“Why are you crying?”

Japan does not answer.

Another thousand paper cranes into the rising water.

She sits down next to him on the stone platform and watches as a giant sky lantern rises from the depth of the ocean, its warm orange glow against the desaturated clouds as tens of thousands of paper cranes follow in its wake.

By the time the sky lantern and its entourage of paper cranes disappear above the clouds, Japan and Taiwan are standing by a calm sea. It is sunset.

「日本、頑張れ。」

She smiles. It is that rare and precious smile that gets him every time. It catches him off guard. It makes him light.

Japan breathes out deeply and reaches for her.

It is a three hour flight from Tokyo to Taipei. There is a distance of 2,100 kilometers.

But not here.

 

**-**

 

 

Stacks of paperwork in files on tall shelves loom over Germany. It does not bother him. In fact, he has taken to reorganizing these archival files himself when he is stressed, sometimes.

It is just when it is nearing 3 in the morning when the neat straight lines feel almost _too_ neat, and he hears Kafka’s words crawling over rows of shelves like ants.  _By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it._ He tries to focus. There it is again, up his sleeves.  _The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired..._

“I can't believe paperwork appears even in your dreams, but not _wurst_.”

Italy sits, smiling and cross legged, on top of a shelf that is at least three meters high. The tone of his voice is flighty, yet somehow the most real thing in the indefinite hallway right then. He lands on his feet elegantly. The wine in his glass does not even slosh.

“ _Italien_ ,” Germany greets with a brief smile. He looks back down and frowns when he sees a paper in the wrong file. “You know as well as I do that this isn't really a dream. This is something else.”

“Mhm.” Italy leans over him, the light through dark red wine obscuring the correct dates of the papers. “So you don't mind if I do...this?”

“Wait, no—”

The wine splashes color splashes into the rows and rows of files and melts them into the colorful buildings of the Amalfi coast up and down. The clouds are shaped like mirrored mountains with rows of vibrant houses down and up. The sun is blue, and the sky is orange, and the ocean is pink.

But the clouds—they’re Botticelli.

“Was that really necessary?” Germany is seated on the tiled floor, one leg stretched out and the other, not. He takes a look at the folder: it is clean and spotless. He ends up crumbling it and throwing it to the side. The space wavers, devouring the crumpled folder.

An amused and approving hum. Germany raises his eyebrows expectantly at Italy, who is sitting on a stone railing.

“For the look on your face when I spilled wine over your file? Yes.” Italy chuckles at the memory. He tilts his head to one side with a dry smile and continues, “Though...it seems that you really don't trust me though, don't you?”

“I _do_ trust you,” Germany reiterates, staring as the wall glimmers and pieces together a Byzantine mosaic. His fingers twist in the fabric of his pants. He looks up at Italy and smiles, tired and exasperated and fond. “Just not all the time.”

It can’t be helped. They are nations, after all.

Italy casts a shadow over Germany when his body slants and the world tilts and the river spills over the banks. His hazel eyes glint in different shades.

“Then if I said I love you, would you believe me?”

Germany swallows then nods, surging up into the kiss. Wine from Chianti, with a hint of citrus underneath. The houses begin to disintegrate into Bauhaus shapes: squares, triangles, circles of primary colors.

He wants to believe it so much he isn't sure if he genuinely does.

 

 

-

 

 

There is a wedding on a velvet border between two youths. Mountains and mountains surround them. Every one of them is named Veľká Javorina. The groom has hair the color of dried hay and eyes the color of fertile soil. The bride has dark brown hair and river blue eyes. When they smile at each other, it is evident: they cannot wait to spend the rest of their lives together.

The wedding festivities went on for days and nights, as the traditions go. For days and nights, a small chata watches over the newlyweds. Inside the chata, Czechia and Slovakia have watched every scene, every sequence in the simple wedding, like every stitch and every pattern in a cloth.

As they watch the wedding, flowers bloom. First, the summer flowers against the blue sky. Then, the spring autumn winter flowers too. Then roses grow over the velvet boundary completely.

“Do you ever wish we were like them?” Czechia asks.

Young, happy, in love, carefree.

( _Human_.)

“No.” Slovakia tucks a hair behind her ear and kisses the corner of her mouth, sweet as summer rain. “I think we are better like this.”

What he doesn't say: _Sometimes_.

She pushes him away with no real force, rolling her eyes but smiling anyways. Czechia has rich brown hair glows with hearth light and sunlight and Heaven’s light. Her eyes are clear and blue as the Vtlava River that runs through her heart. She laughs when he leans in teasingly. He catches her undecorated hand in his.

Slovakia has ash brown hair that sticks up where Czechia ruffles it. His eyes are warm and brown like dark beer in a glass when he looks at her as she looks away.

A private truth: _Sometimes, all the time._

 

 

-

 

 

Only in dreams does fate bend into comprehensible shapes.

China looks across the vastness before him. All under heaven. If there are others like him in his domain, then they are too small to see, too small to hear when he crushes them under his foot. His domain is a painting of water and ink, a masterpiece stretching several leagues long.

Then, it bamboo fiber becomes silk.

He walks the stretch of the Silk Road until he reaches a pure marble monument on barren plains. Gladiator arenas stacked on one after another. In the center a stately equestrian statue of a heroic figure on top of a thick triumphal column with a spiral moving reliefs—history is always happening.

The brightly colored paint is picking off at the base, revealing white marble. There are cracks stretching from below like Jupiter’s bolts.

China walks on, undeterred. He flickers—north south—and walks on.

There is not a cloud in the sky. Only a glaring sun and the vultures that circle it.

The statue is no statue. It is Rome. Power and divinity. Grandeur. His hand raised in a gesture of _adlocutio_ , an empire addressing the countless troops of the centuries that has won him his territories. The stone has spread to his neck, and when the vulture’s shadow is cast, there is marble.

“ _Serica_ ,” Rome addresses China, his voice echoing in the empty monument. “ _Sīnae_.”

He turns his head marginally to the other empire standing next to him on a path made of silk. It is all he can manage.

China nods a greeting in return, contemplative.

Only the truly immortal have no destiny. There is a fate for all of them. He just didn't expect it to come so soon, for Rome.

In the distance, there is a roar of a storm, a moving forest, a towering unknown. China can’t make them out himself, but he knows who is approaching.

“Are those the barbarians?”

“Yes.”

The vultures circle faster and faster, a halo around the blazing sun, impending judgement, resolution. China smells blood and rot in the air, iron in his mouth.  

“What are you going to do about them?”

“What I always do.”

A power gust of wind blinds him temporarily, pushing China back with force. When he opens his eyes, he is already a distance away. The silk he stands upon is hanging upon a few threads from where he stood next to Rome. One of them glows red.

So this is the extent of their _yuanfen_.

“ _Da-Qin_ ,” China addresses Rome one last time.

Marble begins to age and crumble. The vultures circle faster and faster. Thunder cracks the sun in half.

“Don't come back for me,” Rome says.

“I won't.”

China raises his dagger. The last threads of silk are cut.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The whole idea of the Nation Astral Plane comes from discussions with various friends (you know who you are) from Die Pit (historical hetalia collective). Treat it as an abstract, metaphorical space between reality and not, if you will. It's a liminal space. My only headcanon about the Nation Astral Plane is that there are literally no rules or no sense of logic there. It's a mysterious thing that not even personifications understand so I honestly don't either lmao but I wrote it for the "why the hell not?"
> 
> Unlike my general principle of basing my fics on specific irl history or events, this fic is purposefully vague. While it is somewhat inspired by what happens in real life and history, it isn't meant to actually represent anything. (Though...still free to guess what influenced these scenes.)
> 
> As stated above, this fic was written for the hetalia writers discord otp event. The challenge was to pair a word prompt with a sentence prompt for each fic. Frankly, none of the prompts were actually...my taste, so to speak. So the real challenge for me was to...make them work for me and the kind of stuff I like to write about. And then I added the additional challenge of using the surreal and mysterious Nation Astral Plane for fun. But here are the prompts I used for each individual ship:  
> \- japan/taiwan: close + "why are you crying?"  
> \- germany/north italy: duel + "do you trust me?"  
> \- czechia/slovakia: summer + "I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you"  
> \- china/rome: fate + "don't come back for me"


End file.
